The Americas

Obituary

Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer attends an event marking his 100th birthday in Rio de Janeiro

Source: AP

The Roman Catholic Cathedral in Brasília

Source: AFP

The United Nations complex in Manhattan, reflected in the East River

Source: AP

The National Congress in Brasília, inaugurated in 1960

Source: AP

Oscar Niemeyer discusses one of his designs, 3rd June 1960

Source: Getty Images

Planalto Palace, the official workplace of Brazil's president, Brasília

Source: REUTERS

Juscelino Kubitschek Auditorium in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais

Source: EPA

The Ibirapuera Auditorium, São Paulo, inaugurated in 2005

Source: AP

A homeless person sleeps outside the National Museum in Brasília

Source: REUTERS

The ramp of Brasília's National Museum

Source: AFP

The Pantheon of the Fatherland and Freedom, Brasília

Source: REUTERS

Niteroi's Contemporary Art Museum

Source: EPA

A view of the dome of the Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Center in Aviles, Northern Spain

Source: EPA

Headquarters of French Communist Party, Paris

Source: AP

The cultural center "Le Volcan" (Volcano) in the French western town of Le Havre, designed in 1982

Source: AFP

A memorial to Juscelino Kubitschek, the president who moved Brazil's capital to Brasília

Source: EPA

MORE than any other individual, Oscar Niemeyer could claim to have created Brazil's image as a self-consciously modern country. Brazil's most famous architect turned the functionalism of Le Corbusier into a sensual minimalism that was at once daring and restrained. His motto was not that "form follows function" but that "form follows beauty". Like the functionalists he worked in reinforced concrete, but found poetry in it. He rejected right angles in favour of the "liberated, sensual curves" found in "the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman"—shapes displayed in the stunning setting and bright, clear sunlight of his home city, Rio de Janeiro.

After a youth spent in Rio's bars and brothels and his father's printing workshop, he joined the practice of Lúcio Costa, one of Brazil's most influential modernist architects with whom he would enjoy a lengthy partnership. His first big commission was for another man who would become a close friend, Juscelino Kubitschek, then the mayor of Belo Horizonte, who hired Niemeyer to design a set of public buildings for Pampulha, a new suburb. They included a church that a fellow modernist, Oswald de Andrade, described as "the only cathedral still capable of inspiring conversion".

Further commissions for public buildings in Rio followed. Most of the buildings in São Paulo's Ibirapuera park, inaugurated in 1954, were designed by him, including an auditorium only recently built to his original design: a white trapezoid punctuated by a vivid red flame that shelters the entrance. There was also a collaboration—not without tensions—with Le Corbusier to design the United Nations headquarters in New York.

But it is Brasília, Brazil's modernist capital in the arid, empty interior plateau, with which Mr Niemeyer's name has become inextricably associated. Niemeyer recalled later that Kubitschek, elected Brazil's president in 1955, turned up in his house in Rio and said, "Oscar, we built Pampulha and now we're going to build Brasília". And they did.

An international jury chose a modernist plan scribbled on a piece of paper by Costa for a city laid out in the shape of a plane, filled with serried concrete boxes of apartment blocks, hotels and offices, each in their allocated quarters. The city's addresses ("SQN 303, Bl. C, 101") have all the poetry of machine code. But along the plane's central axis are arrayed Mr Niemeyer's palaces, light and jewel-like with their curving concrete ribs, with open ramps instead of steps.

The Cathedral, an abstract interpretation of cupped hands as 16 concrete columns spaced with vast stained-glass panels, fills with light during the day and shines out at night. The National Congress is two tall, thin blocks towering over a single low sweep that supports two huge white bowls. The larger one, upturned, represents the lower house and is often taken to symbolise its openness to all people and political thought (though cynics see it as a begging bowl that cruelly satirises the corruption of politics). The smaller one, downturned, represents the Senate, which has a more inward-looking, reflective role.

A lifelong communist, Mr Niemeyer spent most of the 21 years in which Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship in Europe. He visited the Soviet Union and designed the Paris headquarters for the French Communist Party. But for him communism was more an abstract Utopia than everyday politics.

He returned to Brazil in 1985, and carried on working from his penthouse studio overlooking Copacabana beach until weeks before his death. He designed the Rio Sambadrome, where the city's carnival is staged, and then a similar stadium for São Paulo. The Contemporary Art Museum in Niteroi, across Guanabara Bay from Rio, resembling a flying saucer docking for a day trip at the beach, was completed in 1996. Responding to news of his death, Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, quoted his words: "We have to dream, otherwise things don't happen," and added her own tribute: "Few dreamed so intensely, or made as many things happen, as he did."

Correction: The Contemporary Art Museum in Niteroi was completed in 1996, not 2006 as originally stated. This was corrected on December 7th 2012.

Firstly, the urban plan of Brasilia - which I assume you are referring to - was designed by Lucio Costa, Niemeyer designed the monumental buildings, the military complex and one of the residential block in the Super Quadras.

Have you been inside the Itamaraty Palace and seen the entrance hall and steps, or stood on the lawn of the Alvorado Palace? Maybe a trip to the roof garden of the Ministry of Health and Education in Rio? Maybe you could take a trip to one of the CIEP school designed pro bono for the children of Rio? While there you could visit the house he built in Canoas around a rock looking back over to Guanabara Bay towards the museum of modern art...

His buildings look great in photos however, it would have been much better for urbanism and for the majority of humans if he had just made small model versions and taken pictures. Then he could have left actual building design to architects who care to design things that are pleasing for people to actualy live with.

Your Anit-Brazil rhetoric is boring. Brasilia has long been celebrated in contemporary architectural circles. And for goodness sake, someone - who was NOT an enemy of humanity - died, show some respect or say nothing at all.

It appears that at the bar of public opinion Nimeyer's designs now stand accused of having form but lacked functionality. It is all to easy to criticise architects for not paying due attention to the everyday uses to which buildings are to be put , and to how practical building are on the whole. Strictly speaking such charges are untrue although they are equally made against designers in general. If we observe nature, we will find much there that is superfluous , excessive and unnecessary and yet truly beautiful. Who cares about function if we can have form ? Wise women grasped this truth long ago, which is why they trump men every time.For all the pragmatic functional thinking of men, men always fall for the beautiful whims and whiles of the beautiful woman,who always trump. Women may be impractical , but men cannot do without them. Senseless and yet strong in their powerful potency. You see , much of life can be quite grey and grim ,( and )rather than condemn those who try to bring flashes of light into the ordinary and pedestrian, we should commend them. Indeed life is not perfect but to bring a sense of wonder into our daily lives and our living spaces , and shower them with sparkle and daring takes some courage and some dreaming. Niemeyer was one of those who tried and , in my opinion, succeeded in trying to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary for all his purported impracticality I still salute him , he did not do boring.

I think this is a fair comment about some of his work, especially his later work that has been driven more by younger family members try to milk his legacy. However from an architectural point of view many of his buildings are far more complicated than people understand from the "glory" photos in magazine. Brazilians should be immensely proud of his work.

Brasilia is a city laid out in the shape of a plane (or butterfly) when seen from the air.

The only city that is purposedly designed for its appearance from space.

It would sound cool, except the design plans constrain life for its city occupants who must adhere to a 50 year old city blueprint that has not changed or evolved for the 21st Century. Aesthetics take precedence over commerce, culture, industry, or growth.

If you are in a hole you should stop digging. Spatially the CIEP schools function extremely well, sorry if they are not mock tudor or look like Miami mansions.
If you judge artists by the piece of their work you like the least you aren't going to have a very enjoyable cultural life. It's like saying Tom Jobim was a terrible composer because of "Fascinating Rhythm"... an awful song...

I'm brazilian and former architecture student (haven't finished the course) and this comment resumes what I always thought about Niemeyer. With all due respect to his memoire and his passing, he's been more a plastic artist than properly an architect.

Perhaps a fair point. However if you go back to the 1950's and 60's bearing in mind the financial and technical constraints under which architects at that time worked , you would be charitable and give them credit for what some of them including Niemeyer were able to achieve. Granted some of the buildings from that era are hopeless and hideous, additionally some of them function very badly indeed, never-the-less some of these architects were bold and daring and were able , because of their vision to move the practice of architecture forward. I would have expected you in your comment to be more charitable. I usually endorse your comments and the way in which put them, however on this occasion I must say I am rather disappointed.

Of course buildings should make life more pleasant: they do that by being art. Art is not some abstract, theoretical thing best hidden from the masses in museums. If Oscar Niemeyer designed buildings that not only function well, but also brighten up the lives of those who visit them, work in them or metely pass by, then they are art works. That is what all architects should aspire to.

Actually, doesn't Brasília "Proper", the Plano-Piloto, include only a part of the actual city nowadays? I was told Brasília "proper" is the home of only about 300,000 or 400,000 of its 2,500,000+ inhabitants, so theoretically the original city should be viewed nowadays as one of the many "old towns" preserved in so many cities around the world and where there are really restrictions to economy and growth, while the "cidades-satélite" would be the "new towns" of Brasília. For that to come true, of course, the city should be much more unequal than nowadays, because it seems the "cidades-satélite" (the other urban areas around Brasília) are much more carelesssly administered and receive much less investment (public and private) than the rich and notoriously organized, "historic" Brasília.

Isn't exactly that what makes him one of the greatest architects? aren't buildings supposed to be plastic art? this certainly distinguishes him from the dysfunctional, over-hyped square boxes of the great marketing con-man: Le Corbusier.

If we want buildings which are merely functional , then we might as well get civil engineers to design and construct them , they are capable of doing just that. However buildings, as you rightly say, should possess and project other functions , not least of which is to inspire pleasure in the minds of those who behold them. Like a beautiful woman , a well designed building should be capable of transporting us towards rapture.

What a ( very ) wonderful guy. My late father who was also an architect started working roughly at about the same time as Oscar Niemeyer . Niemeyer in Brazil , my (late) dad in Nigeria. Niemeyer was of course far more successful and fortunate to have been offered the projects he executed. I have in any case always admired his work, which was both innovative and revolutionary. Architecture is really for me the supreme profession , your work really stands for all to see , and that could be for centuries. Nimeyer had the good fortune ( as did my late father ) to shape the cities in which they lived at the time they did , which is very satisfying to both them and the people who knew them personally - although it does mean that others who come behind them , regardless of what they do, are unlikely to have the same impact as they did on the built environment in which they practised.
This obiturary , granted the announcement of Nimeyers death came just before The Economist went to print this week , has been too short to do justice to this great man. May he continue in heaven to design yet other great buildings.

The number of shops located between the Superquadras
is limited by space. Mind you, Brazil is a huge country.
Only a few could own one. That is why Brasilia outskirts
have grown much larger than the capital proper, and without
zoning laws and a vision towards commercial spaces for a
growing population.

Most Communists hailed from wealthy families or near well
to do families. Fidel Castro and Niemeyer are such examples.
These people have continuously believed in limiting the masses
while controlling the wealth and power.

Niemeyer was a mediocre architect by global standards.
I seriously doubt it that he could match Moshe Safdie
in building something like Sands Singapore. Just lifting
the aircraft carrier like deck on top of the three towers
was a massive feat. Check out the infinity edge pool and
the garden atop of the Sands. Have you noticed that Niemeyer
has no gardens in his "Masterpieces?" At least Burle Marx
did a fabulous job at Collor de Mello's Estate. No, I am
not a fan of Collor. I am a fan of Marx (not Karl Marx, but
Burle Marx).

Brazil's economic miracle is not happening right now.
That's what happens when economies suffer from Brazil's
disease (dependency on commodities, Custo Brasil (Brazil
Cost, endemic corruption, lack of vision, elitism, cheap
propaganda and other vain mindsets leading to nothing in
the end).